Summary: HubSpot announced a $32 million investment yesterday by Sequoia Partners, Google and Salesforce.com. This could be a real game-changer in the small business marketing automation landscape. Salesforce.com and Google announced their long-anticipated entry into the marketing automation industry, in the baby-step form of investments in HubSpot. Even the most ambitious vision articulated by the vendors – radically more integrated, analytically-driven marketing management – won’t really change their sector of the marketing automation industry. MORE >>

I spent three days last week at the Inbound Marketing Summit and Hubspot User Group in Boston. Web Content Management panel with leaders from Bridgeline, Sitecore, Percussion, and Ektron - content management systems have evolved to deliver personalized customer experiences across all channles - I only mention this because it supports my own view that Web content systems are candidates to encompass the marketing automation industry. hubspot lead generation inbound marketing innovation social media marketingThat said, here are highlights from my notes. MORE >>

Pinterest is the marketing flavor du jour. Many B2B marketers do not have any presence on Pinterest. In my search for major B2B marketers on Pinterest, I only found a handful using it actively. Here are three of the better B2B marketing examples I found. Hubspot : In classic Hubspot style, Hubspot’s boards are all about content. It isn’t surprising to see Hubspot as an early adopter on Pinterest. However, Eloqua and Marketo, both generally early adopters in content marketing areas, remain notably absent on Pinterest. MORE >>

The folks at HubSpot have been busy this summer, announcing their acquisition of Performable in June and their HubSpot App Marketplace last week. App markets are quite the fashion right now, and HubSpot’s joins the Eloqua AppCloud announced in June. Such APIs are available to varying degrees for other marketing automation products too, so an app marketplace isn’t quite as huge a leap as it may seem. In other words, the app markets are useful but not huge strategic differentiators. performable hubspot app marketplace b2b marketing automation MORE >>

'HubSpot last week released its 2013 State of Inbound Marketing report,  this year weighing in at a massive 175 pages. But as always, the report is crammed with useful facts, interesting stats, and vital tips, tools and techniques for inbound marketing success. To get the full story, download the HubSpot report here. Inbound marketing (a subset of though not to be confused with web presence optimization ) is big, and growing. Companies spend, on average, about a third of overall marketing budgets on inbound tactics. MORE >>